Realty Times September 12, 2002

Use Your Site To Get Listings
by Allen F. Hainge

Don't leave your Web site behind when you go on a marketing presentation! Instead, use it to help you get every listing you go after.

Here are a few tips for doing so:

  1. If the situation is right, show some of your site on your notebook during the presentation. No need to hook up to the Web; just use Outlook's "Work Offline" feature. The pages you want to show are stored on your computer, and they'll show just fine.
  2. Include a copy of your site's opening page in your printed presentation. Hopefully, you have more than one site, so include all your splash pages.
  3. Add the sellers' home to your listings "behind the scene" (on a separate page that's not accessible through your main listing page). Show them how you'll feature their home on your site, either on your notebook or via print copies in your presentation.
  4. Let the sellers know what information buyers can download from your site (the steps to buying a home, how to get a loan, the home buying process, sample documents, how to find the best home, etc.) and show them how this will help sell their home.
  5. Ask the sellers to preview your site before your listing appointment.
  6. Reproduce selected pages from your site as a booklet or a trifold brochure using the excellent ClickBook program and give it to the sellers.
  7. Print out some reports from your Realtor.com I-Lead page and give them to the sellers. Let the sellers see the activity your listings are getting.
  8. If you've got a particularly strong site compared to other agents in your area, ask the sellers to view some agent sites, including yours, prior to your visit.
  9. If you have access to the home prior to the actual marketing appointment, take photos, put together your virtual tour using VisualTour.com, and get the tour on your site so that you can show it to the sellers. If for some reason you don't get the listing, remember that VisualTour.com has a policy whereby it costs you nothing for the tour if it's withdrawn within 72 hours.

    Whatever you do, use the power of your Web site to get you more listings in less time!



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